While most Americans were celebrating VJ Day in August 1945, Yukio Kawamoto had
more urgent family matters to attend to. His parents had been interned in a Utah
relocation camp for the duration of the war, while he served with the Army's Military
Intelligence Service in the Pacific, translating documents and interrogating prisoners.
When the relocation camps began closing in the spring of 1945, he was given an early
release from the Army to help his parents move back to their former hometown of
Berkeley, California.